Materials and Methods: Five hundred twenty five eyes of 513 patients operated for complicated retinal detachment with silicone oil tamponade in our clinic in a 5 year period were evaluated from the patient charts retrospectively. Ocular trauma (27.9%) was the most common etiological factor. Other surgical indications were retinal redetachment, proliferative diabetic retinopathy, degenerative myopia, proliferative vitreoretinopathy, pseudophakia and aphakia related detachments. All the patients were followed up for a minimum of 6 and a maximum of 42 months (mean 8.9 months).

Results: At the 6th month control visit, 49% of eyes had an increase of 1 or 2 lines in the visual acuity. Anatomical and functional success (ambulatory vision) rates were found to be 64.7% and 27.1% respectively. The most common silicone induced complication was cataract formation, followed by keratopathy, glaucoma and emulsified silicone. We detected another complication of silicone oil; optic atrophy (6.1%), which was not reported before in the literature was most commonly observed in eyes having diabetic retinopathy and trauma associated detachments.

Discussion: Although silicone oil has become the choice of treatment in complicated retinal detachments, it is very important to be aware of potential complications of silicone oil to increase the anatomical and functional success rates in long term. An important finding of this study is the higher risk of postoperative optic atrophy particularly in diabetic and traumatic eyes. But overall, silicone oil increases success rates in complicated retinal detachments in long term. Keywords : Intraocular tamponades, silicone oil, complications, optic atrophy.